The Tennessee Federalist Student

Saturday, April 4, 2009

As I noted before, the great and grand hope of President Obama would be that EUROPE WOULD LIKE US AGAIN! Now, I stand by my statements that it doesn't matter what Europe, or anyone else thinks, but it would have at least been nice if he could get them to, you know, stand beside us and fight a little or something. But it was not to be:

Barack Obama made an impassioned plea to America’s allies to send moretroops to Afghanistan, warning that failure to do so would leave Europevulnerable to more terrorist atrocities.But though he continued to dazzleEuropeans on his debut international tour, the Continent’s leaders turned theirbacks on the US President.

Gordon Brown was the only one to offer substantial help. He offered tosend several hundred extra British soldiers to provide security during theAugust election, but even that fell short of the thousands of combat troops thatthe US was hoping to prise from the Prime Minister.Just two other alliesmade firm offers of troops. Belgium offered to send 35 military trainers andSpain offered 12. Mr Obama’s host, Nicolas Sarkozy, refused his request.

Poor Barack pulled out all the stops to convince them to do more. He tried hope:

The derisory response threatened to tarnish Mr Obama’s European tour, whichyesterday included a spellbinding performance in Strasbourg in which he offeredthe world a vision of a future free of nuclear weapons.

He tried lecturing:

Mr Obama – who has pledged 21,000 more troops to combat the growing insurgencyand is under pressure from generals to supply up to 10,000 more – used the eveof Nato’s 60th anniversary summit to declare bluntly that it was time for alliesto do their share. “Europe should not simply expect the United States toshoulder that burden alone,” he said. “This is a joint problem it requires ajoint effort.”

He even tried outright threats:

He said that failing to support the US surge would leave Europe open to a freshterrorist offensive. “It is probably more likely that al-Qaeda would be able tolaunch a serious terrorist attack on Europe than on the United States because ofproximity,” he said.

But, alas, no more help from our friends abroad than when that detestible, mentally retarded, chimpy, cowboy (spits on the ground in disgust) was in office. This must be Bush's fault, somehow.

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Tennessee has a bill up for hearing that would allow professors to carry guns on campus. Here's what the second paragraph of the article says:

State Rep. Stacey Campfield’s proposal, scheduled for a hearing Wednesday beforea House Judiciary subcommittee, would allow any full-time faculty and staffmember with a valid permit to bring a handgun onto their public college campus.

Got that? "full time faculty and staff member with a valid permit." Not really a difficult concept, not complicated with legalese, pretty simple use of words.

So, for whatever self-hating masochistic reasons, I have to go and read the comments. Lets have a look-see, shall we?

I am trained to take out an armed person, others are not. There will be anaccident of the worse magnitude if bill is passed. College students are nottrained in armed combat, how to space themselves, how to ensure that they onlyshoot the intended target, how to shoot under pressure, when to shoot and not toshoot.

Every student should be issued an .44 Mag during registration. It wouldrequire only a small increase in tuition fees but think of the safety aspect.Wonderful idea!!!

I just see alot more dead kids and teachers in our future because gunsare being made so accessible to be everywhere. There'll be shootings overparking places, looking at girlfriends' wrong, or other minor pettyannoyances.

Now this is one of the most stupid things I have heard in a while,armed (KIDS) on our colleges campus. just what's with you people

Look kids are going to get guns anyway. It is irresponsible not toteach them how to protect themselves while using guns.

Seriously now:Have you ever BEEN to college? Lived in a dorm? Do youreally think it's a good idea to arm everyone there? Do you know how many kidsare drinking? How much emotion? How many breakups? Fist fights? Kids living for the first time away from the authority they've had all their lives: theirparents? Do we really want them to have deadly weapons, too? Do you REALLY think that gun crime and injury would go DOWN if you gave all the college students guns? Are you INSANE?

That's out of 36 comments (and there are several others that seriously imply, but don't specifically state, that they understood it to apply to college students (who are not, for the record, "kids", particularly if they have carry permits, which are issued over age 21)).

Anyhow, I support the measure, but doubt it would do a lick of good, given that maybe2 professors on campus would actually make use of it. But hey, if some nut-job comes in blazing, I'd sure hope that I was in one of those professors' classrooms.

By the way, I had the opportunity to meet Stacey Campfield (the proponent of this bill) when he graciously came to speak at an event sponsored by our Federalist Society. I was really impressed with his willingness to discuss and debate his ideas, and he was more than happy to invite tough questions from the students. He is known for being a bit on the extra-conservative side, so a few of the more liberal students discussed staging a protest. Notice that I say discussed; they didn't actually do it, nor did they even bother to show up to ask him questions or see what he had to say.

You can certainly read the whole thing, but don't expect to make any sense out of it. Here's my favorite part:

But ultimately, my true faith was in the man himself. He is different, Ithought. He's had a unique upbringing. He's worldly and uncharacteristicallyeducated. And I simply could not imagine that a black man in America would everbe able to fall in line with the same old group of people and policies. Hispersonal experiences would be too different to allow that to happen.

Because Black People, you know, they're not like us. They're different, man.

Seriously? What a jerk. If I were there, I'm sure that I would have known, obviously, that they weren't infected mosquitoes, but I would have still been pissed! Mosquitoes are gross, and they bite, and it itches. Plus, mosquitoesare attracted to some people more than others, and one of those people is me- I can slather myself in OFF and only be outside for a few minutes, and I'll still come back with bite after bite, while they completely ignore my husband.

How much pain and suffering is an intentionally inflicted mosquito bite worth? In some jurisdictions, punitive damages can be based on the defendant's net worth, you know.

Anyway, the point that I wanted to make is that Bill could do a lot more for poor people in Africa if he just used his clout to get DDT policies changed. Heck, with his cash, he could probably just go over there and start releasing it in remote locations and see what happens. But no, I'm sure scaring and guilt-tripping rich people is a lot more fun.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

My friend Sam is riding his bike for mountaintop removal. Err, well, for stopping it, at least. He started riding last week and plans to visit a number of mining towns and gather a petition to end it, which he will deliver to someone in D.C. for the inauguration.

No, I don’t really get it either. I think he might be getting class credit out of the deal, but I’d pretty much sooner graduate late than freeze my tuckus off on a bike from here ‘till the 20th. Now, Sam’s a bit of a liberal moonbat (he won’t mind me saying that- he thinks I’m loony, too), but when he told me about it, I had to admit that I didn’t know enough to form an opinion about his position on mountain top removal. So I’m trying to learn something, here.

Well, my initial Google search turned up a lot of what I'm thinking of as "Sam style" sites, of the hippy "stop it now!" variety. While these might be informative, I want to explore all of the bases here. My suspicion is that, while this might be associated with some environmental damage, it’s probably also associated with a lot of desperately needed employment, so most the residents affected are probably all for it. Of course, those folks are probably too busy actually earning a living to go out and start a blog about it, so there’s that.

Well, Appalachian Voices does note that this form of mining actually reduces the number of workers needed to do the mining, but I doubt that matters to much if the companies are able to produce more. Otherwise, this site’s pretty hysterical (lead quote: "It's like having a gun held on you with the hammer back and not knowing when the man's gonna pull the trigger."), so it’s probably not really the balanced set of facts I’m looking for. But I peruse their “Myths and Facts” section just be sure.

Some of these just plain don’t make sense. For example:

Myth: Mountaintop removal mining improves local economies.Fact: Tourism pumpsfar more money into West Virginia economy each year than does the coalindustry.Source: Citizens CoalCouncilFact: Surface mining (which includes MTR mining), accountsfor only 1.2% of jobs in WV and brings in just 2.6% of the state’s totalrevenues. The counties where surface mining predominates are some of the stillpoorest counties in the country.Source: 2002 economic census data;

Be that as it may, those don’t refute an argument that this improves local economies in any way. I also note some questionable sourcing:

The Appalachian Highlands are characterized by some of the best and most diverseforest habitats in the world. Current reclamation practices are unable torestore native mixed hardwood forests, but rather replace these ecosystems withfields of non-native grasses. These changes in habitat may significantly impactneotropical bird populations, native salamander populations and other sensitivespecies.Source: Trial Lawyers forPublic Justice

Not exactly established scientists, there. Moving on:

National Geographic tells a story of a family that had been in the area for generations, but moved because of the dust and explosions. However, when you look closer you realize that this this was before the "mountaintop removal" started, so I’m not sure what the point is. That all coal mining is bad so we shouldn’t have any coal? Sorry NatGeo, not going to buy that one.

Seems that what once required 125,000 workers can now be accomplished with 19,000. But isn’t this the case with all manufacturing/labor type jobs as technology advances? I’m not sure that keeping jobs is the goal for people like Sam. The story goes on to tell some truly sad tales about family dying from various lung ailments, but, again, there’s no indication that these problems have changed at all since the development of mountain top removal mining (in fact, several of the dates cited go back far before the development of it), so again, unless we’re looking to stop all coal mining, this is not making me hate mountaintop removal.

Flooding is discussed, but not in any way that would allow anybody to judge the mining company’s culpability:

The issue of flooding also evokes conflicting views. Raney sees no connectionbetween mountaintop mining and floods. "Science doesn't bear that out," he toldme during an interview in his Charleston office. "What causes flooding is toomuch water falling in too short a time."

Yet a study by federal regulators,obtained by the Charleston Gazette through the Freedom of Information Act,predicted that one valley fill at the Hobet 21 mine could increase peak runoffflow by as much as 42 percent.

Vivian Stockman, a project coordinator with theOhio Valley Environmental Coalition in Huntington, contends that 12 WestVirginians have died since 2001 because of floods related to mountaintop mining."Old-timers will tell you property that has been in their families forgenerations never flooded severely until mining began upstream," Stockmansays."It's common sense. Denuded landscapes don't hold water the way forestsdo."

(would it have been so hard to pull some records or newspaper archives and check this out, NatGeo?)

The question of what is to be done with the used land is interesting:

It was not the intent of Smackra, of course, to allow coal companies to walkaway from their surface mines and leave them denuded. Stripped mountainsides,the law declared, must be restored to their "approximate original contour" andstabilized with grasses and shrubs, and, if possible, trees. But putting theentire top of a topped-off mountain back together again was an altogetherdifferent—and more expensive—matter. So mountaintop mines were given a blanketexemption from this requirement with the understanding that, in lieu ofcontoured restoration, the resulting plateau would be put to some beneficialpublic use. Coal boosters claimed the sites would create West Virginia's ownField of Dreams, seeding housing, schools, recreational facilities, and jobsgalore. In most cases it didn't work out that way. The most common "use" turnedout to be pastureland (in a region ill-suited for livestock production) or whatthe industry and its regulators like to identify as fish and wildlifehabitat.

"The coal companies have stripped off hundreds of thousands ofacres," says Joe Lovett, an attorney for the Appalachian Center for the Economyand the Environment, "but they're putting less than one percent of it intoproductive use."

Yet the industry should get some credit for what it'smanaged to accomplish in post-mining land use over the years. It's provided anumber of West Virginia counties with the flat, buildable space to accommodatetwo high schools, two "premier" golf courses, a regional jail, a county airport,a 985-acre complex for the Federal Bureau of Investigation near Clarksburg, anaquaculture facility, and a hardwood-flooring plant in Mingo County that nowemploys 250 workers.

"Economically, we were dying on the vine," said MikeWhitt, executive director of the Mingo County Redevelopment Authority, as wetoured the 40-million-dollar flooring plant, financed by grants from federal,state, and local governments and by private investors. "So we got OPM —otherpeople's money—to get the job done. Without the infrastructure to create jobs,you're out of the game."

There’s also some discussion of reforestation of the area, but with skepticism. Sam’s main complaint when he stated the problem to me was that this was impacting people’s culture and way of life. The NatGeo article hits this as well :

Standing in the doorway of the Mountain Watch office on the main street ofWhitesville, I listened to Judy Bonds reminisce about the way it was 50 yearsago when she was a child. "I used to swim in the Coal River then," she said,"but now it's so full of silt that the water barely comes up to your knees. Itbreaks my heart. I look at my grandson, and I see that he's the last generationthat will hunt and fish in these mountains and dig for ginseng, and actuallyknow mayapple when he sees it. These mountains are in our soul. And you knowwhat? That's what they're stealing from us. They're stealing our soul."

Maybe I’m just not as sensitive to these geographic links because I’ve moved around a lot, but the thing is, things do change. If I said that my neighborhood isn’t the same as it used to be, it used to be that everyone was one religion and the children all had a mommy who was home all day and a daddy who worked, the liberals would be all over me, and rightfully so. Things change. Mountains aren’t one’s soul. One’s soul comes from the things one accomplishes and the people one embraces, not from a place. I’m sorry that you can’t swim or hunt or fish there, but there are dozens of other places that you can. I’m still not convinced. More to come.

As I watched President Bush's final tango with reporters this morning, Iwas reminded of how Chicago Sun-Times columnist Carol Marin described President-elect Obama's press conferences thus far:

"As ferociously as we march like villagers with torches againstBlagojevich, we have been, in the true spirit of the Bizarro universe, the polaropposite with the president-elect. Deferential, eager to please, prepared tokeep a careful distance.The Obama news conferences tell that story, makingone yearn for the return of the always-irritating Sam Donaldson to awaken theslumbering press to the notion that decorum isn't all it's cracked up tobe.

The press corps, most of us, don't even bother raising our hands anymore to ask questions because Obama always has before him a list ofcorrespondents who've been advised they will be called upon that day."

As I watched President Bush's final tango with reporters this morning, Iwas reminded of how Chicago Sun-Times columnist Carol Marin described President-elect Obama's press conferences thus far:

"As ferociously as we march like villagers with torches againstBlagojevich, we have been, in the true spirit of the Bizarro universe, the polaropposite with the president-elect. Deferential, eager to please, prepared tokeep a careful distance.The Obama news conferences tell that story, makingone yearn for the return of the always-irritating Sam Donaldson to awaken theslumbering press to the notion that decorum isn't all it's cracked up tobe.

The press corps, most of us, don't even bother raising our hands anymore to ask questions because Obama always has before him a list ofcorrespondents who've been advised they will be called upon that day."